Blogs from Ionian Islands, Greece, Europe

After hoarding Avios points for years we finally cashed them in. The downside is that to get the best value the only airline you can use them on is British Airways and you have to fly from London. There are other ways to use them, but you don’t get as good a deal. Price wise perhaps this isn’t the route to a massive bargain, but it’s still free. For our outward flight we ‘paid’ extra and treated ourselves to the Thistle Hotel near Heathrow, drawn by the appeal of its restaurant overlooking the runway and a free driverless shuttle pod to the terminal; very sci-fi. Because of covid, the restaurant was closed and the shuttle pod wasn’t running. Ah well. We got to the terminal early the next day, as our Club Europe status gained us ... read more

The day Marv and I arrived in Athens, we did little more than cope with jet lag, mainly by making our way to the Wyndham Grand hotel by way of The Canadian Institute to pick up my museum pass. Getting to the hotel went seamlessly but once there we had a long wait for our room. I was so tired I could little more than vegetate in the hotel lobby, even though the weather outside was warm and brilliant shining. Marv was able to dredge up enough energy to go buy a bottle of water and reconnoiter the neighborhood. While waiting, a lady dressed in mismatched flowery dress and shirt stepped out of the elevator and headed directly for us. She plopped onto the hotel where I sat semi-conscious and proceeded to spend the next hour ... read more

As mentioned in the last blog entry we are now in Greece, but still have the goal of getting to our winter berthing place of Fethiye, Turkey. We have plenty of miles to go and it is now September 16th so we started our journey. We know that there are many wonderful places to explore in Greece, but this season we are “just passing through”. There were only a couple of places that we knew we had to make as intermediate goals on our way. With our having lived for 26 years near Ithaca, NY we decided that we needed to at least make a stop at the island of Itaka in Greece. Another goal would be the westernmost entrance to the Corinth Canal as there is a timing issue you ... read more

We field an early morning call from Issy’s mum and her brother Tony. Issy tells her Mum that she’d get very fit going to church here in Greece, as all the churches seem to be at the tops of mountains. We’ve noticed that Greek monasteries are often on mountains, but this gets us wondering if the churches in the monasteries are only for the monks; perhaps ordinary Greeks go to other less noticeable churches at more manageable altitudes. We briefly consider ringing Issy’s Mum back to reassure her that if she moved here she’d probably still be able to go to church without needing to invest in mountaineering gear, but after further careful thought we conclude that perhaps it’s not all that likely that Issy’s Mum would ever want to move to Greece, so we decide ... read more

Issy is feeling a bit tired, so I set off on my own in our trusty little hire car. I climb the narrow road up the precipitous cliffs behind Paleokastritsa Harbour. The views are spectacular. The road is very narrow. I stop behind another car at a set of traffic lights. It seems that the road through the village in front of me is so narrow that there’s only just enough room for one lane of cars, so I wait for the lights to change so that I can take my turn. A car pulls up behind me, and a very attractive young lady jumps out of the passenger seat and crosses the road to take some happy snaps, while her partner waits patiently in the car for a green light to appear. She finishes and ... read more